Most brands split budget evenly across channels out of habit, not evidence. Here’s how we decide where spend actually belongs.
Every brand we onboard has the same starting point: a media budget spread across Meta, Google, and maybe TikTok, allocated roughly by gut feel rather than by where the marginal rupee actually returns the most. It’s not a bad instinct — diversification feels safe. But safe isn’t the same as efficient.
The first thing we do with a new account is pull 90 days of channel-level data and look at incremental return, not just last-click attribution. Last-click tells you which channel closed the sale; it says nothing about which channel actually created the demand. A brand might see Google Search “winning” on paper while the real driver of that search volume was a Meta campaign three days earlier that never gets credit.
Once we have a clearer picture, reallocation usually isn’t dramatic — it’s a 10-15% shift, not a wholesale channel switch. Small, evidence-backed moves compound. One D2C skincare client saw a meaningful drop in blended CAC within a single quarter, not because we found a magic new channel, but because we stopped funding the channels that were only winning on vanity metrics.
The takeaway: audit before you optimize. If you can’t explain why your current split exists, that’s the first problem to fix — not the creative, not the copy, not the landing page.